Links #142

Most of the Vulcan kids didn’t like Spock because he was half human…He was very lonely and no one understood him…But it was only the need for popularity that was ruining his happiness.  -  Leonard Nimoy

This was such an incredibly busy week for links, I’m not going to waste much of your time in this introduction except to point out that the SCOTUS rejected the publishers’ demands for control of the secondary market in Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley,  the case discussed in last week’s second video; this means that for now, resale businesses (including flea markets, thrift stores, pawnshops and businesses that buy, sell and trade books, movies, music, games, etc) are still legal, though not free to operate without government harassment.  Our top contributor this week was Radley Balko, who sent every link down to the first video (an excellent parody of conspiracy theory videos which he also provided).  The second video was called to my attention by Popehat, who also contributed “librarians”.  The other links between the videos were supplied by Jesse Walker (“McDonald’s” and “ad-blocking”), Luscious Lani (“garbage can”), Wil Wheaton’s cat (“redshirts”), Mike Siegel (“book covers”), Aspasia (“nose pusher”), Grace (“deportation”), and Marginal Utilite (“drug war benefits”).

• Citywide panic over an umbrella.
• I thought The Onion only featured parodies?
• The nauseating sound of an academic licking the boots of power.
• Bureaucrats crack down on the scourge of employing autistic teenagers.
• “…It’s prudent and wise to protect children” by warrantless raids over Facebook photos.
• One of Obama’s secret service agents could be a reptilian Zionist alien Illuminati shapeshifter.
• “Prosecutors acknowledged the detectives had misbehaved but depicted them as likable scamps.”

• Wonderful 1968 advice letter from Leonard Nimoy to a biracial teenage girl who asked how young Spock coped with bigotry.
• Original McDonald’s menu included tamales & “aristocratic hamburgers”.
• Hungry homeless man cited for “disturbing contents of a garbage can.”
• Red shirts are less dangerous than previously believed.
• 20 embarrassingly bad book covers for classic novels.
• “I’m going to push your nose through your brain.”
• Woman faces deportation for barking dogs.
• Canadian government muzzles librarians.
• 15 benefits of the “War on Drugs”.
• An early attempt at ad-blocking.
• This week’s edition of “Fascism in Action”.
• Jack Parsons, rocket scientist and sorcerer.
• Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever (rape edition).
• Why “gender differences” may actually reflect societal progress.
• A new short-short story by Neil Gaiman, “Down To a Sunless Sea“.
• What if Nic Cage was every single one of the original 151 Pokemon?
• Judge refuses to allow dozens of past incidents as evidence in case against murderous cops because it would take too long.
• “If you want the government to truncate his rights because you judge him as ‘the other’, then realize that you’re giving the government full license to truncate your rights too.”

From the Archives

• No intentional parody could mock journalistic credulity and police self-contradiction as well as this incompetently-written mess does.
• In India, a sex worker’s child can be prosecuted if he doesn’t move away from home and support himself the day he turns 18.
• New Long Island police commissioner is “on the same page” as the DA who blames whores for being murdered.
• In reality, men nearly always say “I love you” first and it’s women who shun commitment.
• “The nudes of art are not so distant from pornography as prudish pedants pretend.”
• Statistics disprove prohibitionist claims about “trafficking” in Amsterdam.
• Dr. Hernando Chaves:  there’s nothing wrong with seeing a sex worker.
• Some men use honest cash rather than trickery to obtain their first sex.
• The time Nicholas Kristof, master of doublethink, sent me a lot of traffic.
• The 19^th-century Chinese whore who became the greatest pirate ever.
• South African police punish sex workers for daring to demand rights.
• Yet another Asian prostitute study confirms what we already know.
• The asinine waste of funds that was the Anna Gristina prosecution.
• “Moral Panics in the Last Decade” has one conspicuous omission.
• “Last Rescue in Siam”, a cute spoof made by Thai sex workers.
• How trafficking fetishists imagine themselves as white knights.
• The “gateway” fallacy is a perennial favorite of prohibitionists’.
• The many parallels between our era and the Victorian.
• A few journalists begin to question prohibitionist lies.
• How to recognize police doubletalk in news articles.
• Impotent Swedish politician caught hiring a hooker.
• My two previous columns for the vernal equinox.
• A statement from two human books.
• Another truck-driving serial killer.
• The truth about Foxconn.
• Death of a hypocrite.

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Tuesday Links

I’m sure other parents here can empathize when I say I shudder at the thought of the increasing influence and presence of huge ships in the lives my children.  -  Noel D. Hill

As you can see, our link columns are progressing through the week; the next one will appear on Ash Wednesday, and the feature will slide back into its normal time-slot by mid-March.  The major topic this week was prohibition, not merely of sex and drugs as usual but also of toilet paper, certain clothes and things that don’t actually exist.  We’ll start off right here with an article on how racism led to the removal of the cocaine from cola (via reader SM), followed by more on the links between racism and prohibition of drugs and prostitution.  Alas, stupidity is not prohibited from government, as you’ll see in our second video (which demonstrates the mental capacity of at least some of the people who take it upon themselves to make our decisions for us).  That one was provided by Grace, who also gave us “pedophile” and “7-6-5″.  The top contributor was Jesse Walker, who supplied everything above the first video; that one was provided by Radley Balko and demonstrates once and for all that absolutely nobody can cover Led Zeppelin like Heart can.  Radley also provided “imaginary ban” and “Shakespeare”, and the other links between the videos came from Mark Draughn (“stolen home”), Luscious Lani (“Siberia”), Krulac  (“confirmation”),  Mike Siegel (“translation quiz”), Lenore Skenazy (“toilet paper”), FilmRot Dave (“child hero”), Franklin Harris (“nude accident”) and the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (“gender gap”).

• The funniest set of Amazon reviews I’ve ever read.
• Cookie Monster holds golden biscuit for ransom.
• A man feeding swans in the snow.
• 1600 Transylvania Avenue.
• The Everlasting Tag Game.
• A fascinating basement.

• Saudi cleric gets slap on wrist after beating 5-year-old daughter to death over doubts about her virginity.
• Prohibitionists are never stopped by the fact that whatever they want to ban doesn’t actually exist.
• The DEA wants to “protect” you by reading your medical records without consent or warrant.
• Man makes a minor and not-uncommon error; government responds by stealing his home.
• Cop caught in “pedophile” sting rewarded with early retirement at full pension.
• Cops abusively interrogate 7-year-old for 6 hours over alleged $5 theft.
• A Russian family was lost in the Siberian wilderness for over 40 years.
• I’ve always said this, but it’s nice to see it confirmed.
• Match the British word to its American translation.
• School requires boys to “sign out” toilet paper.
• Another child hero of the glorious Fatherland.
• 20 words we owe to William Shakespeare.
• Naked woman hits naked fiancée with car.
• The drug-dose gender gap.

From the Archives

• Libertarians want government out of our bedrooms, but some politicians want people out of their bedroom clothes.
• Huge hordes of hookers do not follow major sporting events, despite repeated claims to that effect.
• In what profession are the professionals considered the LEAST knowledgeable about the job?
• I debunk the “objectification” myth with help from Rene Magritte and Captain Kirk.
• “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
• St. James Infirmary provides compassionate healthcare for sex workers.
• Ashley Madison is not only a ripoff scam, it has sleazy advertising, too.
• America sacrifices more children to evil beliefs than Carthage ever did.
• South African government distributes millions of defective condoms.
• Another European government wants to tell women how to dress.
• Sometimes prostitution law is like a good news/bad news joke.
• The namesake of my “That Was the Week That Was” feature.
• What testosterone does to women, and what it doesn’t do.
• Is the United Kingdom learning from her former colonies?
• The legendary scientific detachment of Dr. G. S. Brindley.
• Possibly the most disgusting pervert of the last decade.
• Iceland’s extra-nasty version of the Swedish model.
• Why don’t some women like cunnilingus?
• Another advantage of breast implants.
• My two previous columns for Imbolc.
• My first big spate of interviews.
• About the “Video Vigilante”.
• Is electrolysis permanent?
• The hooker vote.

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Due Consideration

Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity.  It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.  -  H.L. Mencken

Despite my steady progress toward cronehood, I find that I still do change my mind on some things from time to time.  Really, this isn’t surprising; while most people become steadily more conservative as they age, I have become steadily more radical.  The reason should be obvious: as many of you have observed, I am unusually pragmatic and unafraid to follow ideas and observations to their logical conclusions.  When I was younger and far less battle-scarred I allowed far more sentiment to contaminate my moral views, and was much less likely to recognize the extent to which people will abuse even the slightest power over others.  But as I’ve lived in the real world, paid attention to its mechanisms and watched even the best-laid plans of mice and men gang agley, I’ve come to understand that the more control anyone (individually or collectively) is given over the lives of anyone else, the more often things go horribly wrong.  And while it’s true that some small amount of authoritarian violence is, unfortunately, a necessary evil, the optimum amount is vastly lower than that which exists anywhere in the world today.

I’ve expressed many ethical opinions over the past three years, and many of you have disagreed with me; I’ve also read the words of many other writers expressing different, tangential or totally contradictory opinions.  And while most of the time my own positions, developed as they have been over three decades of careful observation and consideration, remain unmoved, once in a while little things add up enough so that I recognize that my previous opinion on a subject was unformed, naïve, incomplete, erroneous or even dead wrong.  Sometimes it’s just because I never really thought deeply enough about the issue; for example, because I don’t drink I never thought enough about the way “drunk driving” laws are written to recognize them as fallacious and enabling of tyranny, but then I read an essay which asked why it’s legally considered worse to drive well with a blood-alcohol level above an arbitrary limit than it is to drive poorly (or even cause an accident) cold sober.  Had the authoritarians not taken these laws to their logical conclusion with police-state checkpoints (now with blood extraction and forced catheterization), I might never have been forced to consider the subject enough to recognize their wrongness.  Similarly, I never devoted any serious thought to the laws governing gender-reassignment surgery until a commenter on my column “He or She” very politely pointed out that my supporting the psychiatric community’s “gatekeeping” over the process violated the principle of self-ownership:

…governments and moralists who presume to know more about our minds and ourselves than we do?  Telling us what we are and are not allowed to do with our bodies, “for our own good”?  People who have no experience (or even understanding) of transsexuality unilaterally deciding that the desire to be the opposite sex HAS to be the byproduct of disturbed thinking, simply because it’s not something they can conceive of wanting to do?  I’m not equating transsexuality with prostitution…but I hope the rhetoric sounds familiar…Those safeguards…are not, and never have been, for the benefit of transsexuals.  They’re a buffer for medical professionals against malpractice suits, and the next best thing for the moralistic assholes in power if they can’t criminalize transsexuality outright…it does much more harm than good to set up an endless row of hurdles that transsexuals must clear, usually with a hostile or uncomprehending system, before we’re “allowed” to be what the rest of the population takes for granted.  Prohibitively difficult “safeguards” don’t make the process any safer, they just make it longer, more humiliating, and far more expensive…

In other cases, however, my thinking was clouded by my own emotions.  As I’ve mentioned before, I have fairly pronounced maternal instincts and suffered a very late-term miscarriage (22 weeks gestation) which still tends to upset me emotionally if I dwell on it.  Rationally, I understand that it’s probably best I did not have children, and that my own feelings on the matter no more constitute an argument against the legality of abortion than my aversion to depictions of male homosexual behavior constitutes one against its legality.  And yet, up until last year it always seemed to me that 12 weeks was enough of a window for legal abortion; despite compelling arguments that the limit of viability (roughly 24 weeks) is a far more logical dividing line, I simply did not want to think about ending pregnancies more advanced than my own was at the time of its spontaneous abortion.

But 18 years is a long time on a human scale, and I’m nothing if not reasonable; though dogmatic “feminist” arguments which ignore or even deny the fact that Roe vs. Wade also invalidates prostitution laws are even less convincing to me than Christian superstition about ensouled zygotes, arguments based in the philosophies of liberty and harm reduction are another matter entirely.  An email I received last July from Joyce Arthur of FIRST (the Canadian pro-sex worker feminist group) contained the following passage:

Delays in seeking abortion…are often the direct result of legal restrictions…making gestational limits even more unjust.  Canada has no laws against abortion whatsoever, not even gestational limits, yet only about 0.4% of abortions happen after 20 weeks, and over 90% are before 12 weeks.  This is what happens when you treat abortion like any other medical procedure, it does not turn into an irresponsible free-for-all when it’s not criminalized.  In fact, our abortion rates are much lower than the U.S. and have been in decline since 1997.  Abortion can be…handled the same way as any other medical procedure – through medical policies, codes of ethics, doctor discretion, etc.  The problem with imposing legal limitations…is that women will find a way – if you make it too difficult or too expensive, many will just try to do it themselves or have an illegal unsafe abortion…

Nor are unsafe abortions the only problem; government powers inevitably expand until they are forcibly stopped, and laws defining fetuses as citizens to be protected by law inevitably result in prosecution of women whose actions inadvertently result in miscarriage or stillbirth.  And it gets worse:

…Our study identified 413 criminal and civil cases involving the arrests, detentions, and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women’s physical liberty…between 1973…and 2005…[and] 250…since 2005…A [Utah] woman…was…charged with…homicide based on the claim that her decision to delay cesarean surgery was the cause of the stillbirth…a [Washington D.C.] court…[forced] a critically-ill pregnant woman…to undergo cesarean surgery over her objections.  Neither she nor her baby survived.  A judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her from having an abortion.  A woman in Oregon…was subjected to involuntary civil commitment [for disobeying a doctor’s orders]…A Louisiana woman was charged with murder and spent…a year in jail…[for] miscarriage that resulted from [prescription] medication…In Texas, a pregnant woman who sometimes smoked marijuana…was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor.  A…Wisconsin…court…[arrested a] woman…and [subjected] her to involuntary…medical treatment [because she planned to use a midwife instead of an obstetrician]…if passed, so called “personhood” measures would: 1) provide the basis for arresting pregnant women who have abortions; and 2) provide state actors with the authority to subject all pregnant women to surveillance, arrest, incarceration, and other deprivations of liberty whether women seek to end a pregnancy or not…

For those still stuck in fantasyland about the innate trustworthiness of government, consider that Brazil has already tried to force all pregnant women to submit to compulsory registration and monitoring.  Even people who believe abortion should be illegal don’t generally think women should be arrested for it, but that is exactly what would happen because authoritarian governments totally lack both self-control and the ability to differentiate between an illegal act and a criminal one.  Having given the matter all the consideration it is due, I have come to the conclusion that I can no longer back any legal limits on abortion whatsoever; though I still feel it is unethical for a doctor to abort a viable and healthy fetus without some compelling reason, I also believe it is no concern of the state or any other uninvolved party, and that laws governing pregnancy inevitably lead to far greater evils than the rare ones they prevent.

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Sunday Links

A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible.  -  Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics

The stream slowed down somewhat this week, probably due in part to several major news stories consuming a lot of the intellectual bandwidth.  That is not by any means a complaint or criticism; it’s just that I don’t generally cover major news stories outside of the harlosphere because I feel that others have already covered them in far greater depth than either my format or time allows.  I do have some personal news, though:  those of you who just can’t get enough Maggie will be glad to hear that I have joined the British website Cliterati as a regular contributor, and will be publishing there every Sunday starting next week.  Most of the essays will be new ones, some will be cross-posts and a few will be reposts of older articles which I feel deserve new attention; my first, “Speech and More Speech“, appeared a few days early so that it would still be timely (since it’s on the subject of a controversy which unfolded last weekend).

This week’s leading contributor was Radley Balko, occupying the top-dog slot above the first video (a card trick posted by Teller which says a lot about how easy it is to manipulate human perception).  The second video, “The Vertical Pole”, was provided by Feminist Whore, and the links between the two by Nun Ya (“Hell’s Angels”), Offgridman (“brick wall” and “baby step”), C. Andrew (“infanticide”), Grace (“Lance Armstrong” and “biggest thing”), Thomas Larson  (“mouse”), Popehat (“Cthulhu”), Brooke Magnanti (“hidden mothers”), Baylen Linnekin (“robot restaurant”), and Antonio Lorusso (“fungal sex”).

• Craigslist, Pat Robertson and the Ab Rocket.
• Sounds like he was trying to make up for lost time.
• SWAT team murders man for having too many cats.
• Cops shoot man for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk.
• Urban safety precaution:  lock and bolt your door to keep cops from unexpectedly opening it and murdering your loved ones.

• In June of 2010 a German university student mooned a group of Hell’s Angels, threw a puppy at them and then escaped on a stolen bulldozer.
• Cops excuse murder by claiming a man too drunk to see a brick wall was able to “aim” his car at them…twice.
• Washington D.C. cop murdered his mistress and left his infant daughter  to die in an overheated car.
• Why Lance Armstrong’s “confession” should worry you.
• R.I.P. Stanley Cohen, great scholar of moral panics.
• A carnivorous mouse which howls at the moon.
• Dread Cthulhu leads his cult to milestone year.
• Hidden mothers in Victorian portraits.
• The biggest thing in the universe.
• Another baby step.
• Robot restaurant.
• Fungal sex.

From the Archives

• Unlike their American brethren, Canadian reporters usually blame harm to sex workers on the bad laws and the evil actions of the police.
• Government defines consenting individuals as victims or victims as consenting individuals, depending on what’s most convenient.
• Indian “rescue” group tries to solve problem of their victims escaping by abducting their children instead.
• Control freaks often use rhetoric startlingly similar to that regularly  employed against whores.
• Porn companies issue first warning about leaving LA due to condom law.
• Positive profile of a streetwalker from the prohibitionist New York Times.
• Why would anyone want to work at a place where she was unwanted?
• Official Norwegian study condemns Swedish model as a public menace.
• Politician claims persecuting transgender people “protects everybody”.
• The Netherlands only started collecting sex work taxes two years ago.
• Why Friday the Thirteenth is a day to speak out for sex worker rights.
• Why was everyone so surprised that Silvio Berlusconi hired hookers?
• “Sex Workers Want To Stop Trafficking”, a video from SWOP Chicago.
• Sweden says prostitutes can infallibly be recognized by their clothes.
• How creating criminals from citizens establishes universal criminality.
• Prohibitionists try to blame Backpage for the actions of a serial killer.
• Meet Anna, a prisoner in a world something like ours…but not quite.
• What harm reduction is about, and why sex work is a form of it.
• HIV-positive psycho tried to infect as many people as possible.
• Cosmopolitan‘s juvenile, absurd and ass-backward sex advice.
• Elena Jeffreys on the ridiculous prejudices against sex work.
• Reluctant sex workers are prohibitionists’ best weapons.
• The flu, Jesus Christ Superstar and the invisible majority.
• Sleazy company will test stolen underwear for semen.
• Crypto-moralists wage war on bacon and cheese.
• After 60 years, science still can’t find the G-spot.
• Doublethink in Modesto, California.
• A short tribute to Dolly Parton.
• Is there a “hooker gene”?
• Ottawa’s human library.
• 2011 in review.

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Sexual Predators

There is nothing holy nor sacred to those who have abandoned God and reason in order to follow their perverse desires.  -  François Rabelais, Gargantua (chapter 31)

Fair warning:  what you’re about to read may make you feel ill.  Writing it made me feel both queasy and dirty; I put it off for as long as I could, but I wanted to get done with it completely – including the posting and indexing – early enough so that I could be sure of regaining my appetite by dinnertime.  I probably don’t need to tell regular readers that I’m made of pretty stern stuff; my husband is only one of the many who have described me as “hard as nails”.  But the minds of some people are so wholly vile and disgusting that reading about their loathsome behavior, their indefensible motivations and their twisted rationalizations makes me feel as though I have been hurled into a tank full of raw sewage and leaves my heart pounding and my hands shaking.  The people to whom I refer are sexual predators, those subhuman monsters who are so completely devoid of even the most basic human decency and moral scruples that they think nothing of using other human beings to satisfy their perverted sexual needs, inflicting grievous physical and emotional harm on their victims and sometimes scarring them for life.  Worse still, these revolting vermin form associations with other like-minded scum, pooling their resources and cunning so as to more effectively snare unsuspecting victims.  It would be bad enough to merely know that these freaks existed, but to see them defended, excused and even glorified in a major newspaper is almost more than I can bear:

…“This is Lushous,” she said in a soft, seductive voice.  “You want to come see me today?”  The client had found her on backpage.com, where she promoted herself as a busty woman…eager for company…“For half an hour, it’s just $40, baby.  Tell me what you want to do.”  Lushous wanted to use handcuffs.  She was actually an undercover…cop.  If the man on the phone actually came…he’d be walking right into the department’s latest sting operation…Sharing Room 241 with her was another undercover officer with a nickname, a square-jawed, blue-eyed cop known as Pretty Boy.  He pored through a stack of printed Web ads…[and] called each one.  “Are you doing out-calls today, sweetie?”  They had arranged the room so it would seem like they were just lonely travelers.  Pretty Boy hung a crushed black suit on the rod and placed a used bar of Old Spice deodorant near the sink.  He ditched his uniform for a T-shirt and blue jeans but kept on his wedding ring.  Lushous ruffled the sheets on the queen-size bed.  She had lozenges to keep her voice smooth.  She placed a package of condoms on the side table…In 242, about six officers were on hand to help with arrests and the paperwork.  In 247, there were two female officers to attract men looking for a woman not of Lushous’s type.  Lushous is curvy and black; the two other female officers are white and thin…In 248, a detective posted $10 ads in the adult-services section of backpage.com…“Hello, my name is…” he began typing, trying to dream up a seductive name for the colleague next door.  He then tapped out, “B-R-A-N-D-I”…Ten minutes later, Brandi’s phone started to ring.  “…Am I busy? No…Yes, those are my pictures.”  After she hung up, the man texted her, “Are you affiliated with law enforcement?”  She rolled her eyes.  Every caller asked this question, under the common delusion…that a cop was legally obligated to say yes.  “No,’’ she texted back.  “Are you?”…

I think that’s enough to give you the idea; the cops’ sociopathy is made even more revolting by the reporter’s glowing, fetishized praise, almost as loving and lurid as a Nick Kristof description of the tortures inflicted upon imaginary teenage girls.  But in spite of themselves, the yellow hack and the blue swine managed to produce one paragraph that was true, though not in the way they meant it:  “For police officials, prostitution is not victimless crime…Sex workers are prone to being raped and robbed. Some are victims of sex trafficking. The men who visit them are sometimes assaulted…”  That’s all true, but the victimizers – those doing most of that raping, robbing, assaulting and abduction into coercion and captivity – are the police, and they do it with the support of the government and many of the more ignorant and deluded members of the public.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go take a shower.

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That Was the Week That Was (#132)

The Constitution tells us that…the state may not use a butcher knife on a problem that requires a scalpel to fix.  -  Judge John T. Nixon

No Other Option

A former madam…[will] open the UK’s first brothel…for disabled clients.  Becky Adams…said:  “People have the same sexual urges whether they’re disabled or not…A soldier who comes home from war disabled doesn’t stop being a normal, healthy person with normal, healthy needs…Our new brothel will be kitted out with ramps and hoists for wheelchair access, just like any other service for disabled people.”  The two-roomed establishment, called Para Doxies from the old English word for prostitutes, will be sufficient for two sex workers…and staff to assist clients…the brothel will provide transport to collect clients and take them home afterwards…

Heroines

As I’ve mentioned before, Irene Adler was one of my favorite fictional heroines, yet a number of people seemed surprised when I was displeased with the BBC turning her from a courtesan into a dominatrix in its “updated” Sherlock Holmes series.  This recent io9 article by Esther Inglis-Arkell explores the problems of modern Adler adaptations at some length:

Irene Adler only appeared in one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, but she’s considered a pivotal figure in the Holmes canon, nonetheless.  And we’ve seen several of the latest…interpretations debut their own versions of Irene Adler in recent years…Why is Arthur Conan Doyle’s Irene Adler so much better than the versions crafted by Steven Moffat and Guy Ritchie?…In both…Irene Adler is not simply an admirable person with a taste for sleuthery and adventure.  In the movie series, she’s both a woman who marries rich men for a living and a thief…In the TV series, she’s a dominatrix who dabbles in blackmail and international terrorist intrigue (on the side of the terrorists).  Both characters lean very heavily on sexuality and criminality…and…while the original Adler was independent, they’re both pawns of Moriarty…

Secret Squirrel

Intra-family spying gets ever more intrusive:

…KidTrack™…monitors text messages, incoming and outgoing phone log, each web site visited, location and media…“We see this as being no different than a parent examining the contents of a backpack…” said Ernie Rush of Rush Software…[customer] Rebecca Quesada [said] “As a mother, I feel much safer knowing that I have access to every single text message my daughter sends and receives…I can know where she is at all times, know who she is calling and who she is being called by and have access to every picture that she takes, as well as every single web site that she visits”…KidTrack silently captures this information and periodically uploads it to…servers where it can be viewed by the parent via a web browser…

“Silently” = “without the kid’s knowledge”.  And that means it can just as easily be loaded onto a spouse’s or employee’s phone.  My mother was incredibly overprotective by ‘70s standards, but you know what?  She respected my privacy, and never once (to my knowledge) snooped in my purse, read my mail or censored my reading material.

Droit du Seigneur

Normally I’m against lynch mobs, but in the case of “authorities” I make an exception because it’s often the only way they will face any consequences for their actions:  “…a politician in northeast India accused of rape was stripped and beaten by a crowd of women.  Bikram Singh Brahma is a member of the Congress Party in Assam…He was arrested…[after attacking] the woman…while he was staying at her family’s house…”

The New Victorianism

Apparently, the average age of Xactware board members is 12:

The Lehi [Utah] City Council has renamed Morning Glory Road after a technology company planning to relocate to the street raised concerns about the name’s sexual connotation…”Morning glory” is the name of a flower…but…is sometimes used to describe male arousal.  Councilman Johnny Revill…[said] he didn’t know about the term’s slang meaning previously but was happy to appease Xactware officials…

With Folded Hands

This reaction to a terrible freak accident is, apparently, not a parody:

A 22 year old stripper in Cleveland, OH [died]…after a freak lap dance accident.  She apparently launched herself over a railing, falling head first to the floor 15 feet below…she should have been provided with adequate safety gear.  Safety straps and fall netting should have been an absolute minimum protection…something clearly needs to be done.  Better equipment and improved training are clearly called for…drug testing might also be in order…

The Punitive Mindset

Time tries to glorify the controlling behavior of a pathologically-entitled prude:

Administrators let offenders at one of Iowa’s most dangerous prison units watch violent and sexually explicit movies and TV shows…despite repeated complaints from a female officer who said it encouraged inmates to sexually harass her…administrators told [Kristine Sink] not to turn off the…shows.  When she did, they accused her of insubordination…Sink said she has fought a lonely battle under four wardens against movies that caused inmates to become sexually aggressive — through “10 years of misery.”  She filed a lawsuit…against prison officials alleging sexual harassment, discrimination and workplace retaliation, seeking an unspecified amount of damages…

I have a solution for you, Kristine.  If you are too prissy to handle the sort of raw behavior any sane person would expect from male prisoners, why don’t you get a job someplace other than a FUCKING MEN’S PRISON?

Presents, Presents, Presents!

I received two more generous presents this week:  the whole series of Bullshit! from Paul Reinerfelt, and the Sex Power soundtrack from Pat Murphy.  Also, I’ve discovered that it was Gumdeo who sent the copy of Crisis and Leviathan last week.  My sincere thanks to all of you!

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

Notice that “feminists” aren’t too concerned with “stereotyped gender roles” when it comes to “rescuing” sex workers:

…in an endeavor as far removed from their former lives as the gleaming banks and trendy boutiques of Tel Aviv are from the city’s sleazy subculture…former prostitutes…have received…training in dress design and sewing…[and] are now aiming to find a place in the world of fashion…

One later passage is absurd even by lawhead standards:

Up until a few years ago Israel was a prime destination for traffickers of women.  An estimated 3,000 women per year were smuggled in, mostly from Eastern Europe, to work in the sex industry.  That number has declined since Israel passed an antitrafficking law in 2006…and most of the prostitutes here are now said to be Israelis.

3000 per year for, say, 10 or 15 years…where did they all go?  Obviously, they must have obediently vanished into Sheol when the magical law was passed.

The Prudish Giant (TW3 #9)

Paypal is at it again; they’ve blocked the account of regular reader Frank Adamo for distributing “sexually oriented material” involving a minor.  Girl Becomes Woman is a photo-documentary of breast development, starting at age 9; Frank said, “[It’s] no more ‘sexually oriented’ than a documentary about pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding…I used Paypal to process donations to create the Breast Pride Education Foundation, and after a year…[and] approximately 100 donations Paypal suddenly decides to protect itself from possible scandal by blocking my account and holding my money for six months!”  He filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, but they closed the complaint without action.  Frank notes that the sudden condemnation of his work as porn conveniently came just after he tried to transfer $1000 from Paypal into his bank account.

Above the Law

Yet again:  As long as government actors have excessive power over individuals, this will keep happening:

Two Los Angeles Police…officers…allegedly [preyed] on women…[for] five years, luring them into an unmarked car and forcing them to perform sex acts…Luis Valenzuela and James Nichols targeted at least four women whom they had arrested previously or who worked for them as informants…The pair repeatedly used the threat of jail to get women into their car and drove them to secluded areas where one…demanded sex while the other kept watch…

And keep happening:  “…[South Carolina cop] Larry Heyward [has been arrested and charged with sexual] offenses on a child between the ages of 11 and 14 years [while assigned to the child’s school]…”

And keep happening:

[Washington, D.C. cop] Wendel Palmer…pleaded not guilty…to charges of first-degree child sexual abuse…[which] occurred while Palmer directed [a church] youth choir…Palmer would tell the girl to stay with him…while the rest of the choir members went to a store.  The assaults began in August 2004 when the girl was 11…[and] ran through August 2006…she told investigators there were “too many incidents to count”…

Much Ado About Nothing

Foreign officials visiting Colombia:  Pay your damned hookers!  Colombian hookers:  Please start charging your damned clients in advance!  “…prostitutes stole numerous items from the Honduras embassy in Bogota, Colombia…an employee of the Ambassador…organized a party with alcohol and sex at the facility…[but] they were not paid for their services…[and retaliated by stealing phones, computers and national security documents]…”  And just in case you thought American media had let go of the story featured in the original column of this name:  “Two [DEA] agents ‘facilitated a sexual encounter’ between a prostitute and a U.S. Secret Service agent…in April 2012…a third DEA agent present on the night of the incident was not involved…”  Translation:  two guys helped a co-worker find someone to provide a legal service he wanted.  Oh, be still my heart.

The Immunity Syndrome (TW3 #19)

In the past year, cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea has become five times as common in North America:

…drug resistance has now reached North America in sizable numbers…of 133 patients [in a Toronto study]…6.77 percent…failed to respond to treatment…experts…call “its arrival deeply troubling; clinicians now face the emergence of cephalosporin-resistant N. gonorrhoeae without any well-studied, effective backup treatment options”…

First They Came for the Hookers…

Texas just won’t stop until it makes all sex work as dangerous as criminalized streetwalking:

After years of battling in court, the City of Houston and the popular…strip club, Treasures, have reached an agreement…in exchange for dropping three separate lawsuits against each other, Treasures will pay $100,000 into City-administered Nuisance Abatement Fund to help combat human trafficking.  Additionally, the club must post signs at every table stating no illegal activities, including lewdness, prostitution or drug use are permitted…The agreement effectively ends a court battle stretching back to 1983…attorneys for Harris County continue to move ahead with a lawsuit alleging Treasures is a haven for drug trafficking and prostitution…

Meanwhile, in Dallas:

State Representative Bill Zedler first gained attention…when he led a…crusade to block a Hooters from opening near his neighborhood in Arlington…claiming it would serve as a magnet for sexual predators…[he has] [continued] the fight against Hooters while expanding his focus to battle…other sexually oriented businesses.  His latest salvo…HB 337…would…license [strippers]…New York considered a similar measure several years ago.  And Alabama apparently passed one…But Zedler’s bill…would…require [dancers] to “conspicuously display the…license on his or her person when conducting business…” The bill’s stated purpose is to prevent human trafficking and protect public health…More likely, it will be used as a pretext for hassling businesses Zedler disapproves of…

Wise Investment (TW3 #31)

“Sex trafficking” is already criminal; what this law actually intends to do is wipe out inexpensive escort advertising:  “A federal judge has temporarily barred [Tennessee] officials from enforcing a law…intended to criminalize sex trafficking of minors, after a challenge by…Backpage.com…”

Hard Numbers (TW3 #37)

While “authorities” in Rio de Janeiro try to persecute sex workers into hiding before the World Cup, other cities are instead helping them:

Prostitutes in one of Brazil’s biggest cities are beginning to sign up for free English classes ahead of this year’s Confederations Cup and the 2014 World Cup.  Cida Vieira, president of the Association of Prostitutes in the city of Belo Horizonte, said…”It will be important for the girls who will be able to use English to let their clients know what they are charging and learn about what turns them on…for the same reasons we are also thinking of offering free French and Italian classes”…

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Links and Changes

The most improper job of any man, even saints…is bossing around other men.  Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.  -  J.R.R. Tolkien

I’ve decided to make a few changes in the new year, and figured this was as good a venue as any to explain them; that’s why the Links column appears before “That Was the Week That Was” this time.  Actually, it will be that way next week as well, then it won’t be for a few weeks, then it will be again for a few more before finally settling into its normal Sunday slot in March.  The reason for this is complicated, but it’s mostly based in my sense of aesthetics and organization.  So far, TW3 columns have been numbered by the week of 2012 on which they reported (and after #7, in which they fell).  But if I continued the sequence beyond #52, what would the numbers actually mean?  Of course they’d represent the actual number of such columns I had done, but in a couple of years that wouldn’t be very useful (quick, which week of which year is column #381?)  So I resolved to change the system.  When I first established the Links columns last summer I decided to number them by the weeks since the beginning of the blog, 131 as of this week.  But take a look at that number; by pure coincidence it also works as a designator for week and year (2013 week 1, see?)  So I couldn’t resist using the pattern while it lasts; for the next nine weeks my TW3 columns will bear the numbers previously associated with the Links columns, and the latter will have names so as to avoid repetition.  140 and above break the pattern, so starting in week 10 of this year I’ll change the system again to its permanent configuration, return the absolute week-numbers to the Links columns and never have to mess with it again.

Since I’m a believer in fair exchange, I couldn’t let TW3 steal the Links columns’ number system without giving it something in return, and that is the “this week in blog history” feature.  Actually, it makes much more sense here; TW3 is usually overlong and needs editing to bring it under 2000 words, while Links columns tend to be under 500 words and could use the padding.  Transferring the feature will thus make my life a little easier and again, please my sense of aesthetics.  Furthermore, I’ve decided to shuffle the metaupdates in with the updates in TW3; from now on all items will appear in chronological order of their parent articles, with only new titles out of that sequence at the top.

Speaking of fair exchange, our (only) video today is a 64-second primer on what libertarianism actually means; I’m rather tired of people who imagine that they oppose its principles foolishly attempting to define it by particular (and usually extreme) positions taken by some people who label themselves libertarians, rather than by its true defining principle: the right of each individual to self-ownership.  The “definition by cherry-picked planks” approach is as absurd as claiming that there were no progressives before the mid-20^th century because all progressives support nationalized medicine.  Next time someone tries this, I’m simply going to link back to this column and to “The Philosophy of Liberty”  from my resource box, and leave it at that.  But just to demonstrate I haven’t lost my sense of humor about it, I’ve also featured one of those “What people think” posters on the topic.  This week’s top link contributor was Grace (who supplied everything down to the video), but four others provided two of the links after the video each:  Jack Shafer (first and sixth), Mike Siegel (second and third),  Radley Balko (fourth and fifth), and Michael Whiteacre (seventh and “book burning”).  The eighth arrived via Walter Olson, the ninth via Franklin Harris, “doormat” via Lenore Skenazy, “Godwin’s Law” via Antonio Lorusso and “Spirograph” via EconJeff.

• Single-molecule motor sits on a single-atom bearing.
• I love it when tyrants start feeding on each other.
• Review of state surveillance in 2012.
• At the Mountains of Madness.

• If Athanasius Kircher were alive today he’d be writing about ancient astronauts, homeopathy, conspiracy theories and “sex trafficking”.
• Politician proposes that US government wipe out its debt by minting a trillion-dollar coin and depositing it in the treasury.
• Law professor argues that elected officials should be unencumbered by inconvenient rules designed to rein them in.
• In Macon, Georgia, a known thief, extortionist, sadist and murderer has never been arrested or tried; guess why.
• Neat demonstration of the perils of confusing correlation with causation.
• How Obama decides whether to murder you or just lock you up forever.
• How astronauts could have reached every world out to Jupiter by 1990.
• The “fiscal cliff” deal: $1 in spending cuts for every $41 in tax increases.
• A manufactured non-solution to a manufactured crisis.
• Doormat company makes fun of stupid label warnings.
• Sometimes Nazi analogies are entirely appropriate.
• Book burning, 21^st-century style.
• Remember Spirograph?  It’s back!
• Spacemen will bring us socialism from the stars!
• An excellent argument against “-isms” and dualistic thinking.
• “Washington is wealthy and getting wealthier, despite history’s slowest recovery in most of the country.”

From the Archives

• The first feeble rays of light are beginning to creep into the brains of those who have always accepted prohibitionism.
• New Orleans took steps against prohibitionism in December of 2010, but undid them in the next few months.
• French politicians aim to create a “more tolerant, inclusive society” by being intolerant and exclusive.
• Pearl-clutching Brits are shocked to discover young women doing exactly what they’ve always done.
• “Doublethink” explains the concept from Orwell’s 1984 and provides real-life examples.
• Here are my previous columns for New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and Twelfth Night.
• For feminists who think only women have unrealistic body-image issues.
• A prediction of the future and collapse of “sex trafficking” hysteria.
• Houston cops and journalists steal Christmas toys from children.
• Los Angeles tries to fight AHF one last time before rolling over.
• New York schemes to turn cab drivers into “sex traffickers”.
• Wonder Woman gives herself a breast self-examination.
• My complicated relationship with January second.
• Short profiles of student sex workers.

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That Was the Week That Was (#42)

For all the talk about women involved in the sex industry as “victims”, there is no apparent appetite for actually speaking with them in order to assess what the real issues are.  -  Graham Ellison

Sex Work is Work

“Nairobi Mayor George Aladwa has warned…sex workers that they risk being arrested if they will not stop conducting their business in Central Business District…The mayor urged the sex workers to use their talents in seeking income…”  This is, of course, exactly what he is threatening them for doing.

Updates

Think of the Children!

Indiana school officials believe that sex radiation is so dangerous that exposed students must be quarantined in order to contain the contamination:

Some students…in Anderson, Ind. [who] got a peek of their teacher’s bare breasts on a school-issued iPad…have been suspended and threatened with expulsion…Joshua Troutt, 13…and three other students were in their classroom, playing a game on [the] iPad…[and when] one of the students pressed a button…[the] photograph…was revealed.  “It’s not our fault that she had the photo on there,” Troutt said.  ”We couldn’t do anything not to look at it…She had to have pressed something to make all of her [iPhone] photos synch on there”…

Let that be a lesson to you, kids:  never tell any authority figure about anything unusual that happens, ever.

Wholesale Hypocrisy

Even though the prosecutor euphemistically refers to armed robbery and grand larceny as “improper use of forfeiture funds”, it’s still a pleasure to see this coming up to trial at last:  “Former Romulus [Michigan] Police Chief Michael St. Andre, his wife, and five…detectives pled not guilty…to using asset forfeiture funds…[from] narcotics and prostitution investigations to buy…narcotics and prostitutes… The officers are accused of spending $40,000 in forfeiture funds in one year…[and] St. Andre also used $75,000 from drug forfeiture funds to buy a tanning salon…for his wife.”

Above the Law

Yet again:  As long as government actors have excessive power over individuals, this will keep happening:

A woman in Maryland who was allegedly raped…by a deputy sheriff has filed a $15 million lawsuit against the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office…Lamar McIntyre allegedly…took [the woman, who was awaiting trial] into an isolated holding cell and told her to get naked, [forced her into] oral…and vaginal sex without a condom…”[slapped] her buttocks extremely hard”…[then] took pictures with his camera phone…McIntyre [then] took the woman to the court room “as if nothing ever happened”…McIntyre…admitted to police that he was involved…

Naked Truth

Dr. Brooke Magnanti’s Telegraph article on “sex trafficking” hysteria covers familiar ground, but she’s always a pleasure to read.  Furthermore, because she was born in Florida but did sex work in the UK, she qualifies as “trafficked” herself under the official criteria.  She mentions several useful statistics:

…of the trafficking referrals made to police in the UK, one in four are men, and domestic and agricultural exploitation counts for six of every 10 cases…Liz Kelly and Linda Regan of the University of North London attempted to estimate the number of women brought into the UK for sex in 1998 by surveying [police] reports…they came up with…71…[but this] included…women who willingly arrived…for sex work…In 2007…[Operation] Pentameter Two resulted in five convictions…406 arrests were made…153 of those…were released without charge.  Most of the rest were charged with immigration breaches and unrelated offences.  Twenty-two were prosecuted for trafficking; 7 of those were acquitted.  Ten of the remaining lot turned out not to have coerced the women they brought into the country.  This left five actual traffickers…none of [whom] were detected specifically by actions in the Pentameter Two effort…

She also mentions that the “80% of sex workers are coerced” claim promoted by MP Fiona Mactaggart (and repeated ad nauseum by other prohibitionists) originally came from a 1982 survey of San Francisco streetwalkers.

False Target

“People want to believe that any behavior they dislike…is either wholly voluntary or the result of ‘socialization’…but…[these are] better explained by evolution and neurology than by ludicrous tabula rasa notions.  Why they prefer to believe that people are programmed by “society” or “the Patriarchy” than to acknowledge we are programmed by Nature I cannot say; perhaps they fear that instinct is harder to overcome than learning and therefore choose to deny the terrifying reality…”  More on this same line of thought from Dr. Gad Saad:

…“blank slate” explanations are ubiquitous in the social sciences…men stray from their marriages…due to their viewing of pornography …people succumb to juicy burgers…[because of] those alluring advertising jingles…women [suffer]…eating disorders…[due to] media images that attack [their] self-worth…young [men’s]…violent and reckless behaviors…[are caused by] video games…these arguments are pure fiction…rooted in a perfectly erroneous view of human nature.  Each of [these] is linked to evolutionary and biological principles that have little to do with…socialization…the blank slate view [is] so pervasive…[because] it caters to…the endless pursuit for hope…[and] provides people with the illusion of control.  Alter the supposed culprit environmental cause and the issue will apparently be resolved…

The Public Eye

Though this item from the East Bay Express is largely based around the harm Proposition 35 will do if enacted, it is less an analysis of the proposed law and more an honest and accepting profile of a number of sex workers in the San Francisco Bay area, including regular reader Jolene Parton.  The more articles like this we see, the harder it will be for prohibitionists to support the lie that well-adjusted sex workers are an unrepresentative minority.

That Old Black Magic

Most of this story about a “huge crackdown on human trafficking” in Scotland is the same old bombastic rhetoric, turgid “estimates” and endless repetition of lurid claims about the escort service owners convicted of “trafficking” last year.  But there was an embedded link proclaiming that “Sex trafficking victims reveal horror of witchcraft and torture being used to ensalve [sic] women in Scotland!” which led to an article I missed in January notable not only for the “magical slave control” pap, but also for being published just before the popular exaggeration increased from “15 men a day” to 50.  Stories like this are an excellent development, because they throw a spotlight on the close resemblance between “sex trafficking” hysteria and the Satanic Panic.

Metaupdates

What If They Threw a Party and Nobody Came? in October Updates (Part One)

Since it’s apparent that prudes prefer their daughters to die than to have sex, this study was necessary no matter how totally obvious its conclusions were from the start:

There did not appear to be any difference in the sexual behaviors of adolescent girls who received the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and their unvaccinated peers…Among girls ages 11 and 12 enrolled in a large, managed-care organization, there were no between-group differences in the rate of pregnancy…sexually transmitted infection, or receipt of contraceptive counseling…In addition, the average age at the first composite outcome was no different between vaccinated and unvaccinated girls…

That’s especially good now that a new version of the vaccine may help women who are already infected:

…the experimental vaccine…was given to 18 women with cervical dysplasia, a precancerous condition…caused by a chronic HPV infection…after vaccination, the women produced immune cells that were capable of attacking and killing HPV-infected cells…this…could clear chronic HPV infections, and prevent precancerous cells from becoming cancerous…it’s possible a [similar] vaccine…could treat other types of cancer caused by HPV, such as some head and neck cancers…

J’accuse in TW3 (#13)

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is trying to get his “aggravated pimping” charge dismissed; apparently he’s just noticed that Western society, following behind the US like a flock of obedient sheep, is trying to “criminalize lust”:

…That defense and the investigation, which is facing a critical judicial hearing in late November, have offered a keyhole view into a clandestine practice in certain powerful circles of French society:  secret soirees with lawyers, judges, police officials, journalists and musicians that start with a fine meal and end with naked guests and public sex with multiple partners…the most perplexing question in the Strauss-Kahn affair is how a career politician…was blinded to the possibility that his zest for sex parties could present a liability, or risk blackmail…

It’s only “perplexing” to female American journalists whose dedication to a PC agenda has totally conquered any critical thinking skills they may once have had.  Another one who’s just waking up to reality is Hubert Delarue, the lawyer for one of Strauss-Kahn’s co-defendants, who apparently thinks halfway whores are something new:  “Prostitution was…for a certain type of population…[but] today…there are occasional prostitutes, and sometimes they’re top models who try to make ends meet. They aren’t miserable women on the sidewalk.”

Backwards into the Future in TW3 (#27)

Baby steps, I guess:

Vietnam will free about 900 sex workers…from compulsory rehabilitation centres…when a newly amended…law comes into effect…[next] July…Since July [of] this year, sex workers have no longer been sent to…[the] centres…but…fined up to five million dong [$240 US] instead…drug addicts will continue to be sent to detoxification centres…

The More the Better in TW3 (#32)

I really like this trend of brothels funding athletics:  “…[Members of] a cash-strapped Greek soccer team…are wearing…practice jerseys emblazoned with the logos of the Villa Erotica and Soula’s House of History, a pair of…bordellos recruited to sponsor the team after drastic government spending cuts left the country’s sports organizations facing ruin.  One team took on a deal with a local funeral home and others have wooed kebab shops, a jam factory, and producers of…feta cheese…”

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#34)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we in America could see articles like this strong criticism of an attempt to impose the Swedish model on Northern Ireland?

…Lord Morrow’s Bill…is ill-thought through, confusing and based on rather dubious evidence.  Sex trafficking is conflated solely with prostitution…and…is…accompanied by increasingly fantastical (and unsubstantiated) media claims about the number of “victims”…[yet] there has…been only one prosecution of a “trafficker”…and the women he “trafficked” were two Czech prostitutes that flew of their own volition to Belfast to operate out of [an] apartment that they rented from [him]…

The author, criminologist Graham Ellison, goes on to ridicule the impossible claims made about the Swedish model’s “success” and to correctly present it as the agenda of fundamentalist neofeminists and Christians.

My Body, My Choice in TW3 (#40)

Since the founder of Shared Hope International says that anti-trafficking activism “should be an extension of the ‘pro-life’ cause”, one wonders what her thoughts on this might be:

Argentina’s Supreme Court has ruled that a woman rescued from a prostitution ring must be allowed to have the abortion she wants…Argentina allows legal abortions in rape cases or to protect a woman’s health.  But politicians, doctors and judges often continue to block them…and…in this case, a judge intervened…saying there was no proof of rape even though the woman had been kidnapped and forced into prostitution…

Backwards into the Future in TW3 (#40)

This decriminalization video was produced by an organization named “Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights”; when will American human rights organizations take this unambiguous a stand against prostitution law?

This Week in 2010 and 2011

There were two columns on the multiplying cracks in the prohibitionist dam,  a juxtaposition of sex work with another form of labor, a look at whether prevailing religious views in a country determine its treatment of whores, a meditation on modern society’s attempts to ignore Nature, and news about HIV prevention.  We also delved into the truth about neofeminists, the destruction of civil liberties in the US, the horror of American prisons and the production of prohibitionist propaganda through collusion of cops and the media.  Finally, I examined the vital social role played by harlots in controlling male sexuality and ministering to the disabled, and called attention to society’s galling denial of it.

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That Was the Week That Was (#39)

It’s not about promiscuity, which makes you sound square; it’s not about prostitution, which makes you sound dirty; it’s about sex-trafficking, which makes you sound like you’re on the side of the angels, know-nothing though they might be.  -  Michael Wolff

Amazingly Stupid Statements

“Just Don’t Call It Slut-Shaming: A Feminist Guide to Silencing Sex Workers” is a funny and dead-on-target lampoon of neofeminist anti-whore rhetoric in the form of a mock primer.  Definitely a must-read.

Cracks in the Dam

Canadian courts slap down another government attempt to stop sex workers from claiming human rights:

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the right of a non-profit group representing women…in downtown Vancouver’s sex trade to challenge the country’s anti-prostitution laws on constitutional grounds.  The ruling means the Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society can go back to B.C. Supreme Court to pursue a case it launched five years ago…

The government’s argument against the suit relied on the sophistry that one of the parties in the suit (Sheryl Kiselbach) was no longer affected by the laws due to being retired, and that the other party (the DESWUAVS) could not be affected because it was an organization, therefore neither had the right to sue.  But the judge realized that the government’s claim that streetwalkers had to bring such suits individually was absurd, and ruled in favor of the group.  It’s not only good news for sex workers, but for other marginalized Canadians as well:

…[attorney] Katrina Pacey…explained [that] “This would provide a real opportunity for marginalized people, people with mental health issues, people with HIV, prisoners, refugees, children to form a collective organization whereby they then have the support and capacity to bring these cases forward, as a community”…

Japanese Prostitution

The bad economy and political tensions between their countries have combined to make things increasingly difficult for Chinese whores in Japan, creating a dangerously unbalanced buyer’s market:

…“Rumors have been spreading that Chinese girls have been beaten up by Japanese Johns, and some of them are even begging off on transactions with customers they don’t know out of fears for their safety,” says “pink” journalist Yasuhiro Ebina.  “Many Chinese women tend to be blunt and unsociable, but of late they are forcing themselves to smile, and have been primping themselves to improve their appearance.  Before a deri heru (out-call sex) service might have charged an additional 8,000 yen for honban (the “real thing,” i.e., intercourse), but now they’ve knocked as much as 5,000 yen off the total price”…women from Shanghai tend to be proud and many refuse to dispense oral sex, but over the past week they are now even providing lip service bareback.  And some ladies from Dalian or Harbin are even allowing customers condom-free rides…

Forward and Backward

The stupidity, it burns!  ”…[Washington, D.C.] police lieutenant Jeffery Carroll told residents at a neighborhood meeting…that [a perceived] jump in [street] prostitution may be related to the surge in construction activity and increase in construction workers in the neighborhood.  Carroll told residents that prostitution activity typically takes place between midnight and…6:00 a.m. The recent surge has come between 3:30 and 7:30 a.m. or else at around 3:30 p.m….which police say could correlate to changes in construction shifts…“

Not To Be Taken Internally

Yet another poor fool has died from allowing a non-doctor to inject filth into her arse in a non-medical setting:

…52-year-old Morris Garner…who has had gender changing procedures and goes by the name Tracey Lynn Garner, is charged with depraved-heart murder in the March death of 37-year-old Karima Gordon, of Atlanta…Gordon became ill within 30 minutes of leaving Garner’s house in Jackson after…injection [of a silicone-like substance into her buttocks] but decided to try to make it home to Georgia before seeking medical treatment…[investigator Lee McDivitt]…said her chance of surviving the injections was small, anyway…”The [medical examiner] told me…[that when he] cut the victim open…this material ran all over the floor, all over their shoes, all over the place”…

What I can’t understand is why so many of these self-proclaimed cosmetic surgeons are transgendered.

Above the Law

Once again:  As long as government actors have excessive power over individuals, this will keep happening:  “…Pittsburgh Public Schools police officer…Robert Lellock…was arrested…[on] 23 counts of crimes including corruption of minors, child endangerment and sex crimes…”  Lellock allegedly raped several 13-14 year old boys, ensuring their silence by a combination of threats to kill their families and rewards of marijuana and class-skipping privileges.

An Example To the West

You may remember that DMSC had formed its own football (soccer) team for the children of Calcutta sex workers; well, two of the boys were picked for a world championship team:  “Two sons of sex workers from India’s eastern state of West Bengal will play soccer…in the Indian…team for the Homeless World Soccer Cup 2012 in Mexico…’This is a big achievement in integrating children of sex workers with the mainstream sports community,’ said Dr Samarjit Jana of DMSC.”

The Birth of a Movement

This Guardian article is mostly about sex workers’ reaction  to the socialist scheme to inflict the Swedish model on France, but it also contains interesting information on French hookers’ efforts to circumvent busybody laws and the sleazy tricks cops use to harass them.

…The “white van women”…embody the French state’s difficult attitudes to prostitution.  As in the UK, prostitution itself…is not a crime.  But…[a] 2003…law [forbids being]…in a public place known for prostitution dressed in revealing clothes.  To get round this, women started working in private vans.  Selling sex inside a vehicle was not breaking the law.  But police are now using any means to crack down on the growing number of sex-work vans, namely parking tickets and tow-trucks…some…owe thousands of euros in parking tickets and pound-release fines accrued each month…

Shift in the Wind

An excellent op-ed against “end demand” rhetoric appeared last Sunday in, of all the unexpected places, The New York Times; I’ll bet Nick Kristof isn’t happy:

…policy makers have started to push to eradicate all prostitution, not just the trafficking of children into the sex trade.  Under the catchphrase “no demand, no supply,” they advocate increasing criminal penalties against men who buy sex — a move they believe will upend the market that fuels prostitution and sex trafficking…[but] the “end demand” campaign will harm trafficking victims and sex workers more than it helps them…End-demand advocates’ prototypical victim — an abused teenage girl…forced into the sex trade…does exist.  But they disregard the fact that individuals, including boys, men and transgender people, enter the sex trade for a variety of reasons.  The pimped girl who has inflamed the public’s imagination needs government services and protection, not to be made into a symbolic figure in an ideological battle to eradicate the entire sex industry, which, like many other sectors, includes adults laboring in conditions ranging from upscale to exploitative, from freely chosen to forced…despite their righteous anger, the end-demand crowd is quick to dismiss what many sex workers actually have to say.  Some activists have gone so far as to brand those who criticize their campaign as “house slaves” unable to recognize their own oppression…

The writer is being polite; Melissa Farley’s actual term was “house nigger”.  The article goes on to strongly criticize the Swedish model, flatly stating that it has failed to reduce prostitution and explaining how it harms women; it reports that most abuse of sex workers is by police rather than clients or “pimps” as claimed by the prohibitionists; and it discusses real solutions very much like those advocated in this blog.  The article is not long, and well worth your time.

Worse Than I Thought

Proposition 35 is so awful (Chorus:  How awful is it?) that even trafficking victim advocates oppose it:

…The opponents, who range from a South Bay nonprofit to a co-author of California’s current law against trafficking, say that, instead of helping, Proposition 35 will set back their work by years.  Chief among their concerns is the measure’s focus on hefty penalties rather than a collaborative attack on the problem…That approach, they say, ignores the victims…[they] also condemn the discrepancy between penalties for labor and sex trafficking…Most victims don’t end up in the sex trade…yet Proposition 35 provides for lower penalties for labor victims…

The Phoenix Pharisees

The Maricopa County sheriff’s office only “treats prostitutes as trafficking victims” when they find it convenient:  “…Over the course of a month, detectives made 37 arrests on suspicion of prostitution-related crimes…in an unincorporated area of the county tucked between Tempe and Guadalupe…suspects made contact with an undercover deputy, who secured an offer of sex for money and then used a code word as a signal for other deputies to storm the hotel room…”  “Code word?”  “Stormed” the room?  Their pomposity would be hilarious if they weren’t ruining the lives of real women.

Thoughts On My First Conference

I’m the third interviewee in this video.  It’s not very long, but I still figured y’all would want to see it.

Parting of the Ways

This Guardian op-ed presents Michael Wolff’s opinion of the Backpage-Village Voice split; though he has no love for Lacey and Larkin he has even less for Kristof and company, and the article provides the interesting tidbit that some of the anti-Backpage campaign was funded by the Church of Scientology in revenge for the Voice’s relentless attacks on it.

Metaupdates

Bad Fantasy, Good Reality in TW3 (#7)

Cambodian cops are learning to parrot their American masters quite well:

Chan Sreynuch, the owner of Mikasa Coiffure and Beauty…was arrested…on suspicion of human trafficking, according to the national military police spokesman Kheng Tito…According to him, Sreynuch would lead young women — often aspiring singers and students — to her salon, then connect them with wealthy businessmen…Three of her manicured and coiffed callgirls were also detained…[and] sent to Phnom Penh Municipal Hall’s rehabilitation centre for “re-education”…

Coming and Going in TW3 (#12)

“Anna Gristina…has pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution…[she] will be sentenced…to time served and probation as part of a plea deal.  The judge warned the Scotland-born woman she could also be deported…”

An Example To the West in TW3 (#14)

“Workers in the [Korean] sex industry called…for the scrapping or revision of anti-sex trafficking laws…[which limit their] rights to sexual autonomy and their freedom to enjoy a free sex life as adults…another sex worker surnamed Kim submitted a petition…for…judgment on whether the laws are constitutionally acceptable…“

Real People in TW3 (#21)

British prohibitionist Julie Bindel interviewed the Fokkens sisters, the elderly Dutch whores about whom a documentary was recently made; unsurprisingly, she only reports the negative parts and dismisses the “rosy picture the twins paint of prostitution” as just a kind of weird twin-thing.  Of course she is pleased to report that the Fokkens say legalization has been bad for Dutch hookers (largely because of the exaggerated tax assessments European officials commonly use to persecute sex workers), but cannot or will not comprehend that no sex worker rights organization in the world supports Dutch-style legalization.

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic in TW3 (#29)

If you’re impressed by those brain studies that “prove” porn, sugar, the internet or whatever is “as addictive as cocaine”, you need to consider the study which won this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in neuroscience “for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon.”

This Week in 2011

My columns on Mabon and Banned Books Week were followed by others on misuse of the word “vagina”,  the fallacy of “empowerment”, dehumanization of whores,  dominatrices in the news and women’s views of male sex workers.

This Week in 2010

My first Mabon column, the problems caused by unsatisfied male sex drives, my sex-related pet peeves, one of my earliest columns on “sex trafficking” hysteria  and an angry reply to it, the growth of opposition toward prohibition and my announcement of the Himel decision.

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Poe Folks

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.  -  Nathan Poe

About 20 years ago I read an article by an Episcopalian priest in which he proposed that fundamentalism should actually be considered a religion in itself, and the various forms of it (Christian, Muslim, Marxist, feminist, etc) merely sects within that religion.  It was one of those brilliant observations that immediately becomes part of one’s consciousness, and I’ve looked at fundamentalism exactly like that ever since because it makes total sense.  Consider, for example, those who are mystified by fundamentalist Christians forming anti-sex alliances with neofeminists; once one recognizes that they are both merely different varieties of fundamentalism it’s no more confusing than, say, Methodist and Lutheran congregations getting together for some joint charitable enterprise.  That being the case, it’s obvious that Poe’s Law, though first formulated with regard to Christian fundamentalists (specifically, creationists), works just as well with any other form of fundamentalism (or any form of extremism, for that matter).  Furthermore, the law works just as well when reversed; any sincere statement of fundamentalist beliefs will sometimes be mistaken for a parody.

I recently came across an editorial (from Montgomery County, Maryland) which actually demonstrates both the corollary to Poe’s Law and the relativity of fundamentalism. Not only is it hard to tell from a parody (though context convinces me it isn’t one), it’s also impossible to tell which flavor of fundamentalism has rotted the author’s brain; it reads the same whether she’s an anti-sex Christian, an anti-sex Muslim, an anti-sex neofeminist, a typical control-freak Washington-type or something else:

No parent should be shocked that five high school football players hired prostitutes while on a road trip to North Carolina last week…thanks to smartphones and the nearly complete submersion of the sex trade into the digital swamp, ordering three prostitutes to your hotel room is as easy as ordering a pizza…The bold step of ordering up a prostitute on an iPhone often begins as early as middle school, when legions of boys start downloading porn…Now that the family computer and its Net Nanny aren’t the only way to get online, the access to porn and paid sex is in the palms of our children’s hands, 24-7…Mobile porn has become so prevalent among teens that there is even a nonprofit group, Fight the New Drug, and a micro-industry of treatment camps aimed at teens who have a crippling addiction to it.  For teens ogling mobile porn regularly, the next logical step is to act out that fantasy and click on the many ads urging viewers to order up live sex.

As horrified parents, how do we stop this?  The 18 chaperons on the trip…did bed checks at 1:30 and 4:30 a.m…[but] the…boys evaded the best efforts of their chaperons by placing their order at 5 a.m…The problem here isn’t only about limiting access.  There are deeper lessons to address.  The illegal purchase of sex, the fact that most American prostitution is a result of human trafficking and the reality that the plastic, bleached and enhanced world of online sex is a myth that twists ideas of human sexuality and relationships need to be discussed here.  Parents cannot toss aside online porn as the equivalent of the curiosity they remember.  Porn is everywhere…any child of any age with a Nook, a Kindle or an iPad can go from Word Search or Angry Birds to graphic, violent, degrading sex videos in just two clicks.  And for older kids, not only are they awash in unrealistic, desensitizing images, but they are constantly being urged to take it to the next level, to go live.  Families who don’t have uncomfortable but honest discussions about sex, porn and prostitution are putting kids at risk for some scary consequences…

Of course, it’s impossible for this author or others like her to have “honest” discussions with their kids or anyone else, because their heads are crammed full of so much disinformation about sex, porn and sex work that they couldn’t recognize the truth if it was stuck to their faces with cyanoacrylate.  Just in this short rant we’ve got the myths that sex is corrupting, that adolescents are “innocent” and won’t want sex unless they are “urged” to, that a person can become “addicted” to porn, that law equals morality, that most prostitution involves the new bogeyman “human trafficking”, that porn magically causes cognitive disorders, that the majority of modern porn is “violent and degrading”, and probably a few more that I missed.  Unfortunately, this isn’t just a parody; a very large fraction of Americans really believe in this sex-hating Puritan faith of which Christianity, the Republican and Democratic Parties, neofeminism and every other popular belief system are merely denominations.

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